GB News presenter Dan Wootton has been suspended by the station following an incident on his show involving Laurence Fox on Tuesday night.
Fox – the actor, founder of the Reclaim party and contributor to GB News – was met with a widespread backlash following a tirade against Ava Evans, the political correspondent for the digital news outlet JOE.
During the 45-second rant, he said: “We’re passed the watershed, so I can say this. Show me a single self-respecting man who would like to climb into bed with that woman ever.”
The segment in question was supposedly a response to Evans’ appearance on BBC Politics Live on Monday, when she spoke about men’s mental health, which she later expressed “regrets” about on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Wootton did not intervene during Fox’s speech, only referring to Evans’ follow-up posts towards the end of the discussion for “a touch of balance”, before insisting that Santina is a “very beautiful woman”.
After the show, Wootton apologised directly to Evans, and shared a follow-up post on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Wednesday morning, which read: “Having looked at the footage, I can see how inappropriate my reaction to his totally unacceptable remarks appears to be and want to be clear that I was in no way amused by the comments.”
However, later that day, GB News confirmed that Wootton had been suspended from the station over the incident.
“GB News has suspended Dan Wootton following comments made on his programme by Laurence Fox last night,” the station said.
“This follows our decision earlier today to formally suspend Mr Fox. We are conducting a full investigation.”
Following Fox’s own suspension earlier that day, he posted screenshots of texts allegedly sent by Wootton after the broadcast, in which the former Sun journalist appeared to laugh off the incident.
Fox previously insisted he would not be apologising for the remarks he made about Evans during Wootton’s show.
Ofcom has also confirmed they received “a number of complaints” about the broadcast, which are now being assessed before deciding whether to launch an investigation, as is standard procedure.
“We are assessing these complaints against our broadcast rules and will publish the outcome as quickly as possible,” they said.
Since its launch in June 2021, GB News has already been found to have breached Ofcom rules on three different occasions.